How to Request a Home Visit

 

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It is normally best for a clinician to see a patient at the Surgery. This is because they have full access to patient medical records and better facilities for both examination and treatment of any problems. However the Surgery does understand that some patients are genuinely unable to make the short journey into see a clinician. Therefore the Surgery offers home visits in limited circumstances, normally where a patient is:

  • Terminally ill
  • Housebound and cannot be mobilised

Home Visits Image

Home visits are time consuming. Please remember that several patients can be seen in the Surgery in the time it takes to make 1 home visit, please help the Surgery by coming in whenever possible.

Home visits cannot be requested for convenience or lack of transport, the Surgery often has the numbers of several taxi firms and will gladly give them out to a patient. Often neighbours, friends or relatives are willing to help out. It is the responsibility of the patient to take reasonable steps to visit the Surgery.

Please request any visits before 10.30am to allow the duty doctor or Advanced Nurse Practitioner to plan their day. A clinician will normally contact you first by telephone to assess the problem. This enables the clinician to triage all visit requests. It may be that the problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a District Nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance. This also allows the clinician to collect any information required for the visit.

In the past, GPs were able to do routine follow up home visits. Sadly due to more patients needing to be seen this is no longer possible.